Enabling the State to be viewed as a provider of effective services, meeting citizen’s needs, is a key way to improve public perception of its functions. Improved service delivery is, therefore, presumed to trigger an improvement in public attitudes towards the State, which in turn helps it gain legitimacy, all of which is supposed to lead to an improvement in state-society relations (Denney, Mallett and Mazurana 2015). This presumption, if true, may particularly be relevant to areas either currently undergoing, or recently affected by conflict, insofar as the State has a strategic interest in establishing its legitimacy in these situations.

Whether improved public service provision does have this transformative effect is, of course, open to question. The current research was designed to understand the relationship between the provision of service delivery in conflict affected areas, and state building. Considering the ‘fluid nature’ of the research setting, the paper is conceptualised as synchronic situation analysis (UNICEF and Learning for Peace 2016).  While this is a qualitative research with a thorough document/literature review, primary data was also collected and consisted of one district, each, in Malakand division, south Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Peshawer valley. The main tools used for primary data collection included workshop style consultations, focus group discussions, and individual in-depth interviews, especially with key informants within the government and non-government stakeholders. 

It has been found that most respondents did consider it the role of the State to deliver services, especially delivery of justice and policing. However, there is an expectation of a consistency of vision and discourse within public policy and resource allocation directly addressing needs at the local level. Local government, was, therefore, highlighted as a major conduit for accessing the State. The analysis within the paper, also, discusses policy implications of skewed resource allocation, capacity deficits and managing expectations. 

References

Denney, L. Mallett, R. and Mazurana, D. 2015, ‘Peace-building and Service Delivery’, United Nations University, Centre for Policy Research (UNU CPR), Japan, <http://fletcher.tufts.edu/~/media/Fletcher/Microsites/Human%20Security/UNU%20Peacebuilding%20and%20Service%20Delivery%202015%20carnegie%20paper.pdf>.

UNICEF and Learning for Peace 2016, ‘Social Cohesion and Resilience Analysis Summary’, March, United Nations Children’s Fund, Pakistan Office, Islamabad, <http://learningforpeace.unicef.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Social-Cohesion-Analysis-Summary-20160321.pdf>.